Chelsea football opened its season at home against Lansing Sexton.

Pregame:

Do you see the smile on Coach Lindauer’s face?

That smile means FOOTBALL.

Last year the banner was facing the crowd, so the players were running under a banner that said AESLEHC SGODLLUB. As you can see from the above photo, now the crowd is cheering for the AESLEHC SGODLLUB. #OgSgodllub

The game started with an unusual tactic: After receiving the kickoff and before running a single play, Sexton took a timeout. As we on the sideline were saying we hadn’t seen that and were wondering why on earth a coach would burn a timeout before the first play of the first game, Sexton proceeded to score an 89-yard touchdown. So…first-play timeouts for everyone! You get a timeout! You get a timeout! And YOU get a timeout!

Sexton scored again shortly after its first touchdown, but the game settled down after that and the score stayed 15-0 until late in the second quarter, when Chelsea put together a drive. On a third down deep in Sexton territory, quarterback Scott Crews took off running…

…and scored to cut Sexton’s lead to 15-7.

The weather was generally pleasant most of the evening, but with 8:46 to go in the fourth quarter the officials spotted lightning, forcing the teams to vacate the field to wait for the lightning to go bother someone else (like Dexter or whatever). The rule requires officials to suspend the game until 30 minutes after the last lightning they see. Sometimes lightning moves out of an area quickly and games are resumed before too long; other times lightning sticks around long enough that the coaches decide to finish the game on Saturday. On this strange Friday, neither was true.

We waited…and waited…and waited…and the lightning was making itself at home. The fly in the ointment was this: Sexton had to travel to Chelsea from the Lansing area — about an hour away — and understandably, they weren’t too keen on making a second trip to Chelsea on Saturday. Chelsea was open to waiting as long as necessary to resume the game, so we waited…and waited…and waited some more. Finally (FINALLY), after more than two and a half hours — the length of a typical high school football game — the officials allowed the teams to resume the game. The teams took the field to warm up at 11:32pm.

Most of the crowd had gone home by then, but a dedicated set of fans remained.

As the game resumed, I took a picture of this creature on the Chelsea sideline:

Looks friendly, don’t you think?

Before the delay, Chelsea had been wearing down the very talented but relatively thin Sexton roster. However, the delay gave Sexton plenty of rest, so shortly after the game resumed, Chelsea punted and (a few plays later) Sexton scored. Chelsea added a late touchdown to make it close, but the onside kick went out of bounds, and that was that. The game ended right around midnight.

Next game:
The Chelsea Bulldogs will face Belleville. The game will be at Belleville on Friday at 7pm.